Flat Racing and British Society, 1790-1914

"Mike Huggins challenges many of our preconceptions about flat racing. He shows the importance of racing and betting to many of the middle classes in Victorian Britain; the very early commercialization of the sport; and the limited power of the Jockey Club before the late 1860s. He explores the value of racing to the working classes, the gentry and aristocracy, tracing the sport's development in an age of technological change and the growth of the popular press."--BOOK JACKET.